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“It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People
Background and Objectives: Elderly people may have difficulties understanding the quality and quantity of information about the COVID-19 epidemic, which can put an additional mental strain on their health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to explore the processing of COVID-19 information...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10673444/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004060 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59112011 |
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author | Maksimovic, Natasa Gazibara, Tatjana Dotlic, Jelena Milic, Marija Jeremic Stojkovic, Vida Cvjetkovic, Smiljana Markovic, Gordana |
author_facet | Maksimovic, Natasa Gazibara, Tatjana Dotlic, Jelena Milic, Marija Jeremic Stojkovic, Vida Cvjetkovic, Smiljana Markovic, Gordana |
author_sort | Maksimovic, Natasa |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background and Objectives: Elderly people may have difficulties understanding the quality and quantity of information about the COVID-19 epidemic, which can put an additional mental strain on their health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to explore the processing of COVID-19 information among older people. Materials and Methods: A qualitative study was carried out in summer 2021. The sampling was based on the snowball method. This approach allowed us to communicate with the next potential participants relatively freely and without reservations. Two female researchers (both MD, PhD) conducted the interviews. All interviews were held in Serbian. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The interviews were conducted with 13 participants (average age 71 years). The analysis of qualitative content suggested that four topics could be identified: (1) sources of information, (2) information interest and need, (3) reporting of information and (4) suggestions for better reporting. The participants were troubled by the excess of information, repetitive information about death tolls, unqualified people in media discussing the pandemic and inconsistent reporting. These features caused the participants to feel the psychological burden in processing all the pieces of information. Conclusions: The elderly people in Serbia followed mainstream media to get information about COVID-19; however, they perceived a variety of problems with reporting, which made the understanding of the information difficult and psychologically burdensome. These findings should be taken into consideration when delivering health-related information to elderly people. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10673444 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106734442023-11-15 “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People Maksimovic, Natasa Gazibara, Tatjana Dotlic, Jelena Milic, Marija Jeremic Stojkovic, Vida Cvjetkovic, Smiljana Markovic, Gordana Medicina (Kaunas) Article Background and Objectives: Elderly people may have difficulties understanding the quality and quantity of information about the COVID-19 epidemic, which can put an additional mental strain on their health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to explore the processing of COVID-19 information among older people. Materials and Methods: A qualitative study was carried out in summer 2021. The sampling was based on the snowball method. This approach allowed us to communicate with the next potential participants relatively freely and without reservations. Two female researchers (both MD, PhD) conducted the interviews. All interviews were held in Serbian. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The interviews were conducted with 13 participants (average age 71 years). The analysis of qualitative content suggested that four topics could be identified: (1) sources of information, (2) information interest and need, (3) reporting of information and (4) suggestions for better reporting. The participants were troubled by the excess of information, repetitive information about death tolls, unqualified people in media discussing the pandemic and inconsistent reporting. These features caused the participants to feel the psychological burden in processing all the pieces of information. Conclusions: The elderly people in Serbia followed mainstream media to get information about COVID-19; however, they perceived a variety of problems with reporting, which made the understanding of the information difficult and psychologically burdensome. These findings should be taken into consideration when delivering health-related information to elderly people. MDPI 2023-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10673444/ /pubmed/38004060 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59112011 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Maksimovic, Natasa Gazibara, Tatjana Dotlic, Jelena Milic, Marija Jeremic Stojkovic, Vida Cvjetkovic, Smiljana Markovic, Gordana “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title | “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title_full | “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title_fullStr | “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title_full_unstemmed | “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title_short | “It Bothered Me”: The Mental Burden of COVID-19 Media Reports on Community-Dwelling Elderly People |
title_sort | “it bothered me”: the mental burden of covid-19 media reports on community-dwelling elderly people |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10673444/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004060 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina59112011 |
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